Not much action lately. I need to update my plan. I've been getting stopped out too much. I'm going to go back to 1 lot per trade with about a $2.00 stoploss. That should give about 20? pips of leeway and prevent from getting stopped out so much before taking profit.

I'm also considering trading a single lot on the 4 hour charts just following the trend. Whenever there is a cross over, placed a trade and the trailing the stops. Maybe a 10 - 15 pip stoploss with a 40 pip take profit on the 4 hour charts. I'll update my account status later. Also want to update it on meetpips.com to track my trades there.

Aaarrg!

I was exhausted last night so I didn't even turn on the computer to watch for any trades, but I'm sitting here now watching GBP drop like it's hot. I was hoping for the price to do a big pull back and then enter in to it. That would of been a nice end to the week. Looks like it would of been a nice 50 pip trade atleast. :(

Stooopid mistakes

Oh man. I did a doozy of a mistake. When switching from my 'charting' chart and over to my 'action' chart I misplaced my take profit point by about 10 pips out, so I ended up missing my pips and instead it completely dropped out for a very large loss. There was some very screwy action again last night, some more possible fake outs. I'm not sure if I'm going to trade tonight or just take off till next week.

The aggravating part of it is that I noticed my mistake and pulled my take profit down to where it should be, but the price had already started to recede by then and it stayed just 2 pips away from my new take profit before plummeting.

I swear sometimes it seems like there is someone on the other side of the screen just watching your trades and making the market turns against you. You short, sudden the market climbs, you go long, the market drops. :p Is Big Brother out there sniping your trades?!

missed day

Unfortunately I was so exhausted I didn't even hear my alerts going off last night, so I missed a few possible trades then and this morning. I looks like there would of been 3-4 good trades. Oh well, better to miss a trade then to enter a bad one. There's always tomorrow to trade.

fresh start

The start of the new week, a chance to move on from the mistakes of the past, and there were some great opportunities to do just that Monday night/Tues morn. I was able to grab about 30 pips, but unfortunately I had to leave at 4:30 am and didn't get to look at the charts again until around 9:30 am. In that time there was a HUGE drop! Congrats to anyone that was able to capture that. I'm sure that would of been one of those trades that made you feel invincible, if you were on the right side of it!

I made I think about 7 dollars total from todays trades, so I'm still in the negative from where I started. I know if I would of been able to grab that big drop today that would of definately moved me into the black. Hopefully the rest of the week will continue the trend and maybe I can be back to break even or in the positive cash by then!

Happy trading!

9/15/2009 0:13 1.66219 - Long
9/15/2009 2:03 1.66491

9/15/2009 3:02 1.66140 - Long
9/15/2009 3:39 1.66016

Fakeouts!

I hate fakeouts. :( Had gotten two fake outs at the end of the week. This was right before the 4 hour trend change so I got hit there. That finished the first week of trading out with no winning trades for the entire week! And one of the loses was for about 10 dollars, since the stoploss was so huge. I actually did have 1 positive trade, but it was so small and I didn't follow the rules when I made it I don't count it as a 'valid' trade.


9/11/2009 3:15 1.67230 - Long
9/11/2009 4:03 1.66912

9/11/2009 4:04 1.66868 - Short
9/11/2009 4:28 1.66823

9/11/2009 5:31 1.67077 - Long
9/13/2009 19:44 1.66557

Missed opportunities

Don't you hate it when you have the chance and you don't take it, because you're still a little gun shy from getting burned... 7 am today I got the beep letting me know there's a possible setup, so I check it out and GBP price took off like crazy. There's two settings when you setup the alerts in AccuCharts, the crossover can set the alert off at either after the tick, or after the bar. If you set it up for after the tick, you'll get the earliest notice, but you'll get a lot of false alerts, especially if the price is trending along without much action and the MCADs are continuously on top of each other. On the other hand, if you set it to after the bar, you'll get definite alerts, but sometimes they may come to late, and you'll miss out on some opportunities.

Checking the chart now, It looks like it would of been an opportunity that might of made about 105 pips. Have to see where PipSurfer ends up with that trade.

Hmmm, checking the events it looks like some news items came out at around 7:30 am, so they might have had an impact on getting the price to jump so nicely. PipSurfer might of sat this trade out because of the news events. I'm still not 100% behind the 'always getting out of the trade because of the news events' rule. I think I'll just watch stops carefully for when news events occur, as there's a 50/50 chance they could have a positive effect on the trade.

Oh yeah, and to top off the missing the nice 105 pip action, I always left the hotel I'm at today, walked about two blocks, got down into the subway and was waiting for the train, and realized I forgot my wallet... /sigh.

My Setup

Here's the setup that I am currently using. I'm using FXCM to execute my trades. They had one of the lowest spreads that I found, and also had the microlots that I wanted to trade with to start, and if you search around the Internet you can find a link where you can signup and they give you 25 dollars free to start trading with! If anyone is interested I'll find it and post it here.

For charting I use the demo of GTS Pro, FX Accucharts. Here's a pic of how I have them set up for the 15 min/4 hour GBP/USD charts. I was able to get pretty close to how PipSurfer has his setup with Xstick.



I have it set so that it does a screen text alert and a sound alert when the low Moving Ave overtakes the high Moving Ave, and vice versa.



Here's a pic of the setup of my alerts. Again this is setup in AccuCharts from the GTS Pro demo account. I'm sure you could do it also in an MT4 chart program, but I haven't gotten to really fool around in one that much yet.



(Click the pics to see them bigger and clearer)

Next trade on Sep 09, 2009

Ok, so now the 4 hour trend looks up, I switch to the 15 min charts and get the signal to go long. Everything looks great. The price starts climbing and I’m in the positive, BUT, I didn’t really know where to get out at! Of course you want the price to climb to the moon, but you have to have an exit strategy! I was looking for a risk/reward ration of at least 1:2, which is much to high I’ve learned for the Cowabunga system. I was actually up about 25-30 pips, but since I was hesitant and got greedy, I lost all those pips and ended up going negative about 5 bucks again! Not a very great start for the first week of trading, especially since I should be in the red. I was so discouraged I just shut the charts down and didn’t look for any more opportunities, which is a shame, cause I checked later and there was another valid entry that would of gotten back to where I started and possible in the black.

So from now on I think I will use these rules for my exit strategy. I will open 2 lots, exit for first lot will be approx at 1:1 risk/reward ratio, and this first lot will be set when I set the stop loss. This will be setup as a Order Cancels Other setup. Profit will be taken at that point. Once the Take profit stop is hit, The second lot will either then have it’s stop loss moved to break even or higher and allowed to ride the wave, if the trend is strong enough to indicate that the price will go higher. Hopefully this will lock in atleast 1:1 risk/reward profits for 1 lot, and possible the same or more for the other lot.

One of the most important things to remember, STICK TO THE RULES OF YOUR SYSTEM! Once you start second guessing yourself you are pretty much sure to have bad results!


09/09/09 01:32:42 - Went long 2 @ 1.65283
09/09/09 02:56:19 - Price reversed, should of took profit, but got stopped out instead @1.65020

First trade on Sep 08, 2009

Right after Labor Day, I wasn’t to sure if I should trade or not since it was so close to the holiday, but I was really anxious to start to I started looking for trades. Checking out the 4 hour chart, it looks like it’s in a down trend to me, so I switch to the 15 min to look for opportunities to short. I was so excited to start I jumped the gun and entered a trade before the MCAD crossover occurred. This trade was almost immediately stopped out for a loss of about 3 dollars. This is within the acceptable risk of 3%. I do wish I would have been looking for long trades, cause the market took off for a HUGE jump that night. I was pretty bummed for the rest of the day, but you have to remember to not get emotional with trading. There’s always going to be more trades. Just have to look forward for the next opportunity.


09/08/09 00:49:15 - Short 1 @ 1.63393
09/08/09 01:33:34 - Stopped out @ 1.63633

The beginning...

Hi and welcome to my blog, Folding Paper. This blog will document my forex training account and chart its progress.

I plan to list my trades and also have an ongoing tab as to what my bankroll either hopefully grows to, or drops down too. (Frown) I hope this blog serves as a sortof newbie read along with BabyPips cowabungas blog, so you can also get the point of view of a complete newb as he tries to trade along with PipSurfer.

There’s a saying that ‘if you fail to plan, you can plan on failing, so let’s lay out some ground rules for the account so we have some direction on what we are doing.

We will be using the Kowabunga trading system (see babypips.com for more details on the system) The Kowabunga system is a very simple to setup and easy to implement system and will be perfect to start with. ( http://www.babypips.com/blogs/pip-my-system/ )

Our initial bankroll will be starting with will be $250.00. I feel that that is an amount that is well within the reach of most people if they get inspired. I was going to do $100.00 dollars, but I feel the 250 will allow us a little more flexibility with stops and drawdowns when they occur. And with all the screwups from the learning curve in the beginning. hopefully it will be enough to withstand those initial losses and then have enough left over to start building up.

I’ll be trading only the GBP/USD 15 minute chart in the beginning, and possible branching to other charts if we have success. The 4 hour chart will be checked to confirm the current direction of the trend and trades will only be entered that follow that trend. For example, if the 44 hour trend indicates an up trend, we will only look for long trades, if it is trending down, we will only look for short trades. Each trade will stay within the 3% risk of our total account. (This is one of the most important rules we will have to follow)

To start I will be trading a micro-account, 1 lot per trade. If the initial stake can grow I will increase lot sizes to stay within the 3% rule. No trades will be held for longer than 24 hours, in fact most will be under 1 hour. I usually will only be trading Tuesday thru Thursday and trades will only be entered from approximately Midnight EST to 12 PM EST. I’ll also try to keep an eye out for news events and either close the trade, or move stops extremely close to protect profits if they are there.

I’ll be looking at taking profits around the 00 and 50 markers, but this will change dynamically depending on how the market is moving.

And the final rule, all these rule can be broken as needed if I feel that the need arises! ;-) Hopefully there is enough interest in this blog and I'll continue it and keep posting on it everyday! Any questions of comments, please let me know!

Thanks for reading!